Buyout deadline is march 27. GCI has 3 days after that to reject or accept a submitted offer. If it's accepted, the fired, errrr, laid off, errrrr, voluntarily retired employee can work no more than 2 weeks. Sometime around the 2nd week in April.

People have to submit their buyout acceptance by the last week in March - maybe Monday or Tuesday. They'll be told if their acceptance is accepted within three days, and then those who are retiring must leave by mid-April.

Jim,Looks like our former Chief Digital Officer, Chris Saridakis, was one smart man. I was just reading ebay's preliminary proxy statement filed yesterday. He sold his Gannett holdings at the high in 2010 and he then joined Gsi commerce and made a ton of money after he sold gsi to ebay last year. Looks like he stands to do well there too. He holds over 350,000 shares of ebay (worth $12.5mm), plus he was paid a $5mm sign-on bonus, plus he has an incentive plan for $30mm paid after the fourth year. This is in addition to his $1.5mm annual cash salary and bonus.

The report can be found here:http://investor.ebayinc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-12-104201

Hete is a question: what has GE done other than invest wisely? He has never created anything from scratch that was successful for more than a few years. He is a savant at finding and investing in the right companies but he is no Steve Jobs. Get off your knees people.

This is the reason why I liked Saridakis. He had enough money that he did not have to worry about being fired when he challenged Gracia and the rest of these corporate drones. He certainly was not afraid to speak up against the Gannett "establishment" and he did often.

Most of the people at Gannett (admittedly, myself included) are afraid to challenge this leadership team because we need our jobs. This blog is a good resource for us to tell management what we are thinking.

We need more leaders on this management team that made their money taking risks!!! Not just accepting a corporate position and a jet!

Think you answered your own question, 4:22 ... A guy that classy and grounded SURELY wasn't CD's kinda guy! CD probably seethed if he saw CS attempting to connect on a personal level with "the littles."

Yeah, Jodi Gersh is "working" hard on her first day at SXSW... She managed to register for a level-2 social drinking-badge at Uptapped. Untapped is a mobile based social network for beer drinkers. You can see Jodi's newly created page http://untappd.com/user/jodiontheweb/badges/825083?ref=social_badge

Well, her behavior only contradicts the story she contrived in defense. You all know the story.. that she was only drinking water and getting plenty of sleep during SXSW-2011. I thought it was the most bizarre introduction. Given today's events, it seems to make sense that Mrs. Gersh fabricated the "plenty of hydration & plenty of sleep" prelude of her "How I do SXSW."

I enjoy a condemnation or two of the pompous; they have it coming, insulated and wreaking havoc on the lives of their underlings. But come on.

It's a "top down" company, meaning the cocooned elite as opposed to a a cooperative, creative, horizontal organization, that's its structure. Obsolete, but that's it. The tone here is becoming a bit overly frothy!

How different is this from dickey playing golf after his grim reaper routine? Or a gaggle of gannett francofiles going to Cannes? Or Heather Frank's boondoggle trips to Beverly Hills? Partying with a couple of beers doesn't seem that big a deal.

8:51 PM ,Twitter ADVERTISED there, years ago, by displaying their product on two very large monitors. Twitter was not "introduced" there, because it had already existed, prior to that paricular advertisement campaign.

Also, the "interactive" kick off event is "video games" at a very large arcade. You can read about it here: http://sxsw.com/interactive

SXSW Interactive News ---------------------- ScreenBurn Arcade Open Late Saturday for the SXSW Interactive Opening Party! Posted by tammy on March 9, 2012InteractiveScreenBurn Going to the SXSW Interactive Opening Party? Then try out the ScreenBurn side entrance open until 9:00PM that gets you into the party AND you can enjoy some video games along the way! Swing by early to check out the amazing fun and games at the Arcade. That means some time to play hands-on demos at exciting exhibitor booths from Alienware, IGN and Red 5. Then pick up a pre-party 3D print during MakerBot’s special appearance from 6:00- 9:00PM. Or you could enjoy a smorgasbord of play-tainment from the latest video game releases to classics like Settlers of Catan and Steve Jackson Games’ Munchkin! So don’t get caught in the boring

Just HOW MANY FOLKS FROM GANNETT DIGITAL ARE PARTYING AT SXSW????The first Gersh-thread mentioned that there was a "group" going to SXSW. ( And, I imagine that all of these defensive posts are from the Gannett Digital Party group. )

You know what, our company is going through turmoil, and the Gannett Digital group feels that they can throw caution to the wind and spend whatever the hell they want. I hope that this group is dealt with, when they return home to corporate. I think a re-org for the Digital Group is in order. They can stay at home and play video games.

Oh, lay off Jodi. She's doing what we're supposed to do: Go to places, talk to people, score some face time. The problem is not that she shouldn't do this -- good on her! -- the problem is that Gannett should let other journalists do the same thing. Maybe they could peel off $1 million from $300 million they're spending on buying back stock to let journalists travel.

Also: She's smart, pleasant, and hasn't done any of the evil things that Maryam, Hunke and others are doing. Seriously. Aim a little higher, people, and don't turn on your own. If you're a writer, all she's doing is helping more people read your stuff.

11:22 PM,Journalists would keep our buisness objectives in focus, and truly promote our content/ our product. Social media is just another platform for communication. Social media is far from rocket science, and to have a separate group, specifically designated to "social medai", is self-defeating. One look at GD's pinterest, and you know we have a real problem that needs to be addressed.

I worked for Gannett for many years before being laid off. It took me three years to finally realize that leaving their was the best thing to ever happen to me. I was a battered soul and didn't even know it. It took me a long time to find work, but now that I have, my faith in myself has been renewed, and my colleagues and supervisors let me know of their appreciation of me almost daily. This rarely ever happened at Gannett, and when it did, the compliments were forced and even phony.

Advice to anyone who wants to sleep better and reclaim their professional self esteem: Leave Gannett. I don't care if you work for the smallest TV station of the biggest newspaper -- it's a toxic company. You might have a hint about how toxic it is, but until you actually leave and put some distance between you and Gannett, you won't fully understand how rotten at the core that place is and how all of the bad karma has seeped into every corner and crack in the organization.

Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."